Monday, April 23, 2018

Work hours

xIn which industries do employees work the longest hours per week? by BusinessWorldBusiness World has this infographic feature based on the 2017 Gender Statistics on Labor and Employment (GSLE) report released byPhilippine Statistics Authority which showed the industries in which employees work the longest hours per week. The top 3 spots were Administrative and Support Services, Information and Communication and Transportation and Storage. I'm wondering if the first two implies BPO work, because people I know who work in these industries definitely work more than just 53 hours per week, and does not include the possibility that night/graveyard shifts. I can believe the long hours T&S which may include those driving public transport and those trailer trucks. My father used to drive buses going to the provinces, and we barely saw him, like once a month if we're lucky. Meanwhile, the last spots are occupied by Arts, Entertainment and Recreation, Fishing and Real Estate. Again, I'm wondering if AE&R include media production, which is classified as entertainment according to the BIR. People working in media (whether news or TV/movie productions) work far longer hours than 39 included in the survey, and most work on a per project basis. One is not assured of tenure. If lucky, one might get a contract renewable yearly, which features a "retainer's fee" that's more or less the equivalent of the minimum wage or an "allowance" for "brainstorming." Fishing and farming may be seasonal but definitely takes longer hours. Included in the bottom half is Education, which supposedly take "only" the traditional 40 hours per week. But it does not take into consideration that teachers and professors do course planning, class output checking, research, consultation with students, meetings and committee work, which together require you to put in more than the 40 hours stated here. If a teacher is tenured, then those hours are paid for by the institution one belongs to. Part timers are a different matter. PTs are only paid for classroom hours, or time spent inside the classroom actually teaching. But the real work is what needs to be done before you enter the classroom, and then the output that needs to be checked and graded. One is not paid for consultation hours, or the committee work or the meetings, etc. If one looks at most privately run Higher Education Institutions (HEI), the bulk of their faculty members (or Full Timers) are a mere 25% of the population, and yet whose rates are double those of PTs. The rest (a good 75%) are part timers who sometimes hop from one HEI to another just to make ends meet or make at least as much as the FTs. There is also the possibility that one school term one gets some teaching load or units and the next there's none. It's a precarious job. Sometimes it's difficult to look at these surveys, especially when you've worked in the industries mentioned and know the real hours involved aren't just those done at the desk or inside classrooms.